Fig. 4. Neuronal differentiation in reeler cortex. A shows confocal pictures (maximum intensity) of E16 frontal sections of wild-type and reeler cortex stained for the neuron-specific antigen ß-tubulin-III. Note that the thickness of the cortical plate is comparable in wild-type and reeler cortex, while alterations in the organization of the cortical plate and fiber tracts are already visible. To detect small quantitative changes in the number of neurons, reeler mutant cells were crossed with Tau::EGFP mice that express GFP in neurons (Tucker et al., 2001). GFP-positive neurons were quantified at the fluorescent-activated cell sorter (FACS) as depicted in B in examples of sort profiles of a wild-type-Tau::GFP and a reeler-Tau::GFP cortex at E14. Left histograms show the dot plot of cells in forward scatter (FSC; x-axis) and side scatter (SSC; y-axis). The polygonal area is indicating the gated, i.e. analysed, healthy cells. The histograms on the right side show the number of events (x-axis) and the GFP-intensity (y-axis) and cells with green fluorescence above background are depicted in green. Note the identical number of green fluorescent neurons in wild-type and reeler cortex.